The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services will release more than $67 million in stopgap funding to help stabilize North Carolina’s early childhood education and child care centers.
It’s the last scheduled payment of Child Care Stabilization Grants, which started in 2021 to keep child care centers open and to improve early childhood teacher pay.
Governor Roy Cooper said the state relies on high-quality early childhood education and child care to support children’s healthy development and learning, allow parents to work, and keep businesses running, but the programs are in crisis.
He called on the legislature to make investments in childcare centers before more close, more early childhood educators quit and programs become unaffordable for too many parents.
State childcare advocates asked lawmakers for a $300 million emergency allocation to keep centers going after federal pandemic grants ran out in June. The Republican-led General Assembly provided the $67.5 million to continue the grants through Dec. 31.
North Carolina has lost 116 childcare centers over the past year.
